ECARS

East European Centre for Atmospheric Remote Sensing

Mission

The Earth’s atmosphere is more than just the air we breathe. It’s also a buffer that keeps us from being peppered by meteorites, a screen against deadly radiation, and the reason radio waves can be bounced for long distances around the planet. Many people think that life is only affected by the air near the ground. We are here to prove them wrong.

Motivation

The atmosphere is 600Km depth. Weather phenomena occurs bellow 10Km, civil aviation is flying at 13Km altitude, protective ozone layer is manly located at 30Km altitude, while meteorites burn at 60Km. Radio waves are reflected by the ionosphere, above 100Km. We cannot fully understand the effects near the ground if we don't know what happens in the upper atmosphere.

Benefits

Today, ground-based, airborne or satellite based instruments are screening the sky to collect information on atmosphere composition and dynamics. This data are used to forecast the weather and air quality, to understand climate's trends, and to assess the impact of volcanic eruptions, forest fires, pollution, and extreme weather.

About 20 % of the Earth’s population breathes severely contaminated air, especially with carbon monoxide and sulfur dioxide resulting from industrial processes. This increases the number of respiratory conditions, especially amongst children and elders.

The frequency of skin cancers is increased by the thinning of the ozone layer. This is due to chlorinated hydrocarbons and fluorocarbons from aerosols, fridges, detergents and polystyrenes. These gases rise into the atmosphere and decompose into chloride ions that destroy the ozone layer. In 1985, a hole into the ozone layer was observed in Antarctica. In 1995, a similar hole was spotted into the ozone layer over the Arctic. Now, chlorinated hydrocarbons and fluorocarbons are replaced with other chemicals in the industrial processes.

Acid rains form when sulfur dioxide or nitrogen oxides combine in the atmosphere with water vapors, forming acids. The resulting acid rains destroy plants and animals, killing entire forests. If this acid reaches rivers or lakes, it destroys all the organisms living there.

Scientists all over the world recognized many decades ago the importance of observing the behavior of the whole atmosphere. They acknowledge that not only climate & weather, but also the quality of the air we are breathing cannot be forecasted unless the physics and the chemistry of the atmosphere is known in detail, from the ground to the upper layers. Since it is too expensive to probe all the time and at each altitude the air, researchers took advantage of new technologies such as remote sensing: multiwavelength imagery or radiometry, laser or radio sounding.

Between the 22-26 January 2018 was held ECARS 3rd technical workshop. The subject of this workshop was data synergy and exploitation: correlation and synergistic analysis of atmospheric data from different sensors …

ECARS 3rd Technical Workshop is going to take place in Bucharest between 22-26 January 2018. The topics of the workshop are: Data synergy and exploitation Current challenges in ground-based atmospheric …

Satellite Cal/Val Activities employing surface and airborne in-situ measurements ECARS 2nd workshop was held between 3- 12 April 2017 in Agios Nikolaos and Finokalia, Crete, Greece. The trainees had the …